Why is "real life" so unrealistic?
In an episode of the legendary Userfriendly comic Miranda takes the male geeks to a camping trip and they are astonished. Wow, what a great resolution and color depth the nature has and so many polygons! This should make all of us think how much easier life would be if it was like in the old-fashion computer games. Our brains would use only a fraction of the processing power that is spent handling three dimensions, unlimited amount of colours, ultra-high frequency stereo surround and - shudder! - smells, tastes, physical sensations. It is not like we need computer games with those things, we need a life without them, to simplify our reality, to bring us back to our roots! (I'm convinced humans used to be two-dimensional back in the history but as 2d fossils are rather fragile, there is no evidence of that.)
So, what if our life was like the old platform games Super Mario, Commander Keens etc? Nowadays many people feel their lives don't have any meaning or goal whatsoever. That causes depression and loss of sleep. But if we lived in platform games, we would have something to strive for. Things like saving the world or at least the princess (a prince for us females) magically spice up the life of an individual. What is also important to people is knowing their exact value in the society. In a platform game reality that problem is solved. The higher the score, the better the person. And everyone knows how to get a high score: collect all the flowers, balloons, chocolate bars and pepsi cans.
Failure happens to all of us, but in the platform way of life one failure would never be fatal, you would just lose one of your lives and you could have more lives than your cat. If you made it to the end without too many failures, there would always be a reward for you, even if you cheated. No need for religion, no need for morals or leaders or lunchbreaks, just do what you're meant to do and maybe you will leave your mark in the hall of fame.
Still, not everyone would be content with the Keen lifestyle. The visual part isn't too good and brains aren't needed at all, only quick reflexes and a raygun. What's more, it is hectic, linear and frustrating. So what if our world was like the one in the computer game Myst, the one with beautiful landscapes in addition to an ethereal atmosphere? Many would find it boring, but many find this misleadingly called "real world" boring despite the gazillions of faces, vertexes and perfect antialiasing. In a Myst-ish world we would have no such thing as death. You would have plenty of time to walk around and enjoy the magnificent sights (who needs animating things anyway?). Problems would occur but they would eventually be solved given enough time and patience. Myst world would be more colourful than the platform world but also more peaceful and more tolerant. No score, no identity, no angst.
On the other hand, Myst doesn't give us enough of a prize in the end. The solution is simple and it is called Nethack. When you win the game by offering the Amulet of Yendor to your god, you ascend to the status of demigod(dess). Not all of us have a desire for saving this corrupted world but everyone wants to be a demigod. Nethack is very simple, we would live on a 2d grid and there would only be eight directions to face. You could take as much time to prepare your next move as you wanted. The other side of the coin is that death (and also Death) exists in Nethack. You only have one life, but there is a nifty item called amulet of life saving and I haven't seen those for sale in my nearest supermarket and I bet you haven't either. There are also loads of other cool stuff that just makes one drool. Wands of polymorph, potions of gain ability, the ability of teleport and one to control your destination, rings and cloaks of invisibility etc. Even a wand of wishing! Some ordinary items perform different things in Nethack, like the magic marker, with which you can write any scroll you know, even the scroll of genocide ...shiver.
Some people groan at the roguelike way of perception. It is true that Nethack features cannibalism, human sacrifices, graffiti writing and occultism. But on the other hand you can also be a monk, atheist, pacifist, vegan or ascend to the demigodhood as a gecko. Nethack allows conducts, identity and sex. And Nethack and most games lack the most annoying things of this so called "real" life: aging, taxes, the need to go to toilet, politics and nasty mother-in-law's. Think about it this way: if life really was so interesting, why would we play computer games? It sucks that they always release things in the beta phase. I demand a bugfixed version where they've concentrated on playability and left out all this supposed-to-be fancy crap. I demand my copy of Life II - Return to oldskool!